Meryl was struggling to put on the BadLad's bulky suit. From what she could tell, the suits were one-size-fits-all, which meant she was drowning in it while Milly was crammed in almost too tightly to move. The helmet-piece sat heavily on Meryl's shoulders and the rest of the suit sagged around her to pile up in folds between her knees and her feet.

"This is impossible," she muttered, trying to shift the weight of the bulky shoulders to something more manageable. She gave up. "Screw it, let's just go."

"Where?" asked Milly.

"Back to the bunk room," said Meryl, reaching up to put Milly's faceplate back in place. "I need my derringers." She attached her own faceplate and led Milly back up to their bunk room, glad of the disguises that let them move freely between decks and corridors, not limited to back passageways or—god forbid—more air ducts.

When they reached the bunk room door, still well-hidden in shadows, Meryl removed her suit's faceplate and carefully knocked out a shave-and-a-haircut on the hatch as best she could with one over-large gloved hand. For a long time there was no response, and Milly nudged her with an elbow.

"Do two-bits," she whispered, her voice still pitched low, augmented by the faceplate. Meryl gave Milly a sideways scowl that the younger woman could never have made out in the dark, but grudgingly reached up to knock the reply.

A clear two-bits came from inside the bunk room before Meryl's knuckles had even touched the heavy hatch door. There was a clank noise as the door unlocked from inside and a small white face appeared in the narrow space between door and door frame.

"Mil—augh!"

Evie had caught sight only of the BadLads' suits, not Meryl's face, and she tried frantically to pull the door shut again. Meryl stuck out one heavily-booted foot—steel-toed, thank god—and Evie fell backwards as the door stopped suddenly, wrenched out of her hands.

"It's us!" said Meryl, pushing the hatch open and climbing clumsily into the room. "Remember? Two-bits, that's us!" Milly followed, and Meryl turned to remove her partner's faceplate before she could speak out in a man's voice.

"Hi, Evie!" said Milly, cheerfully, waving as best she could through the BadLad's suit.

"We're just stopping in for my cloak," Meryl told them, lumbering down the room's narrow pathway and reaching up into her bunk. She rummaged around with one hand and found her cloak bundled up at the foot of the cot.

Meryl let the cloak fall open and realized she didn't know what the hell to do with it. It would be a little conspicuous for one of BDN's goons to be running around with a white cloak on—not that the clasp would fit around the suit's ridiculous shoulders anyway.

"Ma'am?" asked Milly, hesitantly.

"Damn, damn, damn," hissed Meryl. The suit didn't exactly have an excess of pockets for her to stow any pistols away, and she suddenly regretted not bringing one of the BadLads' rifles with her. It wasn't her preferred weapon, but she could use it well enough and it was certainly better than having nothing.

A thorough, albeit quick, search of the suit did finally find a single zippered compartment on the left hip just large enough for two derringers. It already contained a half-eaten candy bar and Meryl removed it, scowling, to make room. She rolled up her cloak and stowed it safely away again in her bunk.

Two. Fantastic.

She and Milly left the bunk room, making sure Evie locked the heavy hatch door behind them, and it wasn't until they were three decks up that Meryl realized she could have put another two pistols in Milly's suit.

Damn it.

Meryl gave up on going back and led Milly further aft, hoping to find some real BadLads that could lead them to wherever BDN had gathered the passengers or sent his men. Heading toward the rear passenger cabins, Meryl stopped suddenly to listen intently to the corridor around them, certain she had heard a faint knocking sound from somewhere nearby.

"Do you hear something?" she asked Milly. Meryl was unsettled to hear her own voice so loud within the confines of the suit, and even more so at the slight lag before her question was filtered through the suit's faceplate. It was an echo of her words in a man's voice, and she sincerely hoped she wouldn't have to put up with it for long.

"Hear what?" asked Milly.

Meryl heard it again, quiet knocking, and she followed the noises to a blank-faced door. She hesitated for a moment, fiddled around with the zippered compartment on her suit and retrieved one of the derringers, then pulled the door open.

"What the—" Meryl stopped short. Two BadLads were sitting on the floor of the janitorial closet, tied back-to-back with their hands and feet bound.

"Thank god you found us!" said one of them.

"My goodness, what happened?"

It was so strange to hear Milly's worried query, one that Meryl had heard so many times, coming from the BadLad standing next to her.

Then a voice not her own suddenly blared in Meryl's ears. She winced at the deafening volume and heard Milly squawk somewhere nearby.

"Hey scumbags!" said the voice. Meryl realized the BadLads' suits must have an internal PA system, and she would bet Vash's bounty that it was Brilliant Dynamites Neon himself on the other end. "If you all keep dragging your heels, I'll kill you!" the voice screamed. "Catch the bastard! Bring him to me, NOW!"

Milly wondered aloud who Neon was talking about, but Meryl could have laughed.

"Only Vash can make someone that angry," Meryl told her. "You," she said, addressing the captive BadLads. "Which way did he go?"

"That way," said one, jerking the suit's massive shoulder toward the front of the ship.

Meryl stowed the derringer in the zippered compartment again and shut the closet door on the two men.

"Hey, wait!" one of them called. "Let us out!"

Meryl jumped as another voice blared out at her, this time from the steamer's PA system, echoing down the corridors. "I'm at the starboard passenger cabins!" it said. "It's him! It's the blonde!"

Meryl slid to a halt and grabbed the arm of Milly's suit.

"Wait, that's..."

"On the other side of the ship!" finished Milly. "How do we get there from—"

"No," interrupted Meryl, "I mean, that voice—"

"It's no good! He's hidden himself with incredible speed! He's—" The words were cut off, drowned out by a gargled, high-pitched, painfully familiar scream.

"That's Mr. Vash," Milly said, matter-of-factly.

"Which means he's not at the starboard passenger cabins," said Meryl. "But why lead them there?"

Something rocked the steamer again and Meryl fell against the corridor wall. The weight of the suit put her off balance and she slid to the ground, wondering what the hell was going on.

"What's with the bumpy ride, Boss?" came a BadLad's query through the suit's intercom, giving voice to Meryl's concern.

"Ship's navigator disagreed with me," said Neon, dismissively. "He's dead. So's the steering."

"Oh fantastic," muttered Meryl, as Milly pulled her upright again.

"That doesn't concern you now," Neon barked. "New plan; you morons on B-deck, clear out the ballroom. Everybody else circle back around each stairway, we're going to lead this bastard into a trap."

Neon started laying out a detailed plan, using the suit's intercom to tell his men where to go and then using the steamer's PA to say the opposite. Meryl briefly wondered if it was worth blowing her cover to get to one of the steamer's communications rooms and alert Vash as to what was going on. She decided she could get to the ballroom just as quickly, and maybe get an upper hand on the situation from there.

"So don't kill him," Neon finished, through the suit's intercom. "Not yet."

Meryl's plan to get to the ballroom first went awry when the route she planned included one of the narrower crew passageways she had used earlier that evening; the BadLads' suits simply wouldn't fit through it. When the sound of gunfire rang through both the corridor and the intercom, Meryl panicked, trying to find another shortcut.

She and Milly got to the ballroom just as all the BadLads stopped firing, and Meryl tried to hold off any further panic by repeating Neon's order, "Don't kill him," over again in her head.

Now Neon was visible head-and-shoulders above the rest, standing at the front of his gang of BadLads, and Meryl managed to push her way to the front of the crowd just as Neon brought a laser pistol up to aim. She had to stand on her tip-toes to reach, but she jammed the barrel of her derringer up under the man's jaw.

"Stop!" she shouted.

The whole room seemed to freeze and for a long moment all Meryl could hear was her own labored breathing, deafeningly loud within the confines of the BadLad's suit.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" demanded Neon, looking down at her sideways. Meryl ignored him.

"Vash," she called to the room at large, still trying to catch her breath. "You okay?" Risking a glance away from the man she held at gunpoint, Meryl looked around for Vash. She found him standing against the doors at the back of the long ballroom, and the walls on either side were riddled with hundreds of bullet holes. He looked unhurt, if completely baffled.

"Uh—yeah," he managed, finally, staring at her wide-eyed. "I guess?"

Meryl removed the suit's faceplate with her free hand and glared at him, saying, "It's me, Idiot."

"Oh," said Vash, looking surprised. Then his face split in a broad, Idiot grin. "Hi!"

"Enough!" said another BadLad, turning his rifle on Meryl. He dug the barrel into her ribs (or where her ribs should have been, through the thick suit), demanding, "Drop it, or I'll—"

Meryl heard the sound of Milly's stun-gun and an instant later a giant metal claw snapped tight around the man, flinging him forward into a few of his fellows, creating a BadLad pile-up in the center of the room. Meryl glanced back over her shoulder to see Milly waving at Vash.

"Hi, Mr. Vash!" said Milly. Then she pointed toward her suit's faceplate. "It's Milly," she explained. "I just can't take off the—"

"Who the hell are you people?" Neon shouted, startling Meryl.

"My name is Meryl Stryfe," she said, from long-ingrained habit. "And this is my partner—"

"Milly Thompson!"

"We work for the Bernadelli..." Meryl began her usual litany, but stopped short. She sighed heavily, shaking her head. "We're with him," she said resignedly, pointing at Vash, who looked startled to hear it.

"And who is he?" asked Neon, impatiently.

"Boss!" said one of the BadLads, suddenly. "I recognize him from all the posters! That's Vash the—"

The last word was drowned out by a dozen shouts of alarm as the steamer bucked under their feet. The derringer flew from Meryl's hand as she was thrown sideways, and absently she recognized the grating scream of twisting metal from several decks below. She could feel a new tremor in the steamer's shaking now and knew something had gone wrong in the engine room.

And then she was on her back, and she wasn't sure how long she had been there. She couldn't see, and couldn't breathe, and couldn't move, and for a terrifying moment Meryl didn't understand what had happened. Then the weight settling on her chest let out a low groan and Meryl realized she was trapped under the body of an only semi-conscious BadLad. The man was slowly crushing her as her suit sagged under the weight, the whole of his bulk across her chest, forcing all the air from her lungs.

"Ma'am?" Milly called, and her voice was her own; she had made it out of her suit. "Ma'am! Where are you?"

"Here!" gasped Meryl, trying to move a hand, a foot, anything that might attract attention. But she was pinned, and almost out of breath. "Here..." She could hear Milly's soft sounds of exertion, could feel bodies shifting around her, and then finally squinted up into the fluorescent ceiling lights as Milly rolled the last BadLad off Meryl's chest.

"Ma'am!" said Milly, relieved, pulling Meryl up into a sitting position. "Are you alright?"

"Better, now," Meryl admitted. She looked around the room as best she could, seeing only piles of inert BadLads. "Where's Vash?" she asked, sharply. "And Neon?"

"I don't know," said Milly, shaking her head. "They were gone by the time I got out of my suit."

"We have to find them, now," said Meryl, anxious. Neon had been ready to kill Vash before she had intervened. And now...? Meryl panicked, struggling with the suit. "Milly, can you help me get this damn thing off?" The younger woman kept Meryl propped up and reached for the release at the back of the helmet-piece.

Meryl heard Milly muttering softly under her breath as she worked, until she finally sighed and looked back to Meryl again.

"It's stuck, Ma'am," said Milly. "The clasp is crushed, I can't get it undone."

"Damn it," hissed Meryl, collapsing angrily onto her back again. There was the sound of gunfire and screaming from somewhere behind them, toward the casinos on the main deck. "Shit," said Meryl. "Shit." She managed to pull her arms out of the sleeves and into the main body of the suit; it was so large on her that there was room enough to reach one arm up through the hole the faceplate normally covered. "I'm coming out through here, then," she said, twisting her body to get her head through the hole as well.

"Will you fit?" asked Milly worriedly, hovering over Meryl, clearly not sure how to help.

"Don't have much choice," grunted Meryl, pushing down on one of the suit's giant shoulders with her free hand, trying to lever herself out, pulling her other arm tight across her body to make the span of her shoulders as narrow as possible. She scraped up her injured shoulder again but managed to get her whole torso free and breathed a sigh of relief. When she tried to stand, the metal ring that attached the faceplate to the suit caught at her hips and refused to go further. Meryl swore, pushing down on the suit with both hands, but it wouldn't budge. "Milly, help," she asked, reaching up toward the younger woman.

"Ma'am?" said Milly, uncertainly.

"I'm stuck!" Meryl said. "Just pull!" Milly took her hands and started pulling her upward, but without enough force to make any real progress. She stopped pulling as Meryl winced, and looked worriedly down at her.

"I don't want to hurt you..."

There was another sharp scream from down the hall, cut suddenly short.

"Get me out of here!" demanded Meryl, and Milly set her mouth in a grim line. She grasped Meryl under the arms, braced her foot on the body of the suit, and yanked.

Meryl popped free of the suit like a cork from a bottle, nearly knocking Milly over. She caught her balance on Milly's arms and let out a strangled little noise at the pain, looking down to see the sides of her long shirt had nearly shredded through as the metal ring scraped over her hips.

"Thanks," said Meryl, breathless. She winced again, pressing her hands over the raw skin, quietly muttering, "Ow." A quick glance around the room told Meryl she'd never find her lost derringer in time to be of any use, so she tried to retrieve the second pistol from the discarded suit's hip compartment.

The zipper had broken, trapping the derringer inside.

Meryl let out a wordless shriek of rage and ran out into the hall empty-handed, headed toward the main deck with Milly close on her heels. She was surprised to immediately find a crowd of people blocking her way and she slid to an unexpected halt, trying not to run straight into a group of girls at the back of the throng. Meryl managed to stop in time, but Milly ran into her, and they and the girls all toppled over in a heap.

"I'm so sorry!" said Milly, leaping to her feet and pulling both Meryl and the nearest girl—the one Meryl had refused to sell booze to earlier, she realized—upright again.

"What's going on?" Meryl demanded of the girl, as Milly helped the others to stand, too.

"I don't know," she said, equally confused. "Everybody's just looking out onto the observation deck, but I can't get close enough to see why."

"Right," muttered Meryl, and she turned away to start digging her way through the crowd. Now was no time for subtlety, and she used her bony elbows and shoulders indiscriminately, shoving people out of her way to squeeze through to the front. Vaguely she could hear Milly following her, saying, "Sorry! Excuse us, we—sorry, sir!"

The mass of people behind her was so eager to see what was happening that the push toward the front was crushing Meryl's ribs into the railing that separated the enclosed passenger cabin from the open-air observation deck. She couldn't breathe much, but at least she could see.

Vash and Neon stood out in the open, facing each other, apparently waiting for something, and it took Meryl a moment to realize what was happening.

"Seriously?" she demanded shrilly, startling the people crowded around her. "Now?"

"A duel!" said Milly, who had made her way through to Meryl's side.

"We don't have time for this bullshit," fumed Meryl. Men... "We have to get the steamer under control again. I have to stop this!"

"But how?"

Meryl belatedly heard Milly's query, but by the time it registered—and she realized she had no idea how whatsoever—she had already ducked under the railing and was running full-tilt toward where the two men were facing off.

A huge chunk of rock fell suddenly to the deck, scraped from the canyon wall by the steamer's protruding upper hull, and Meryl skidded to a stop in surprise. She watched Vash throw himself sideways behind the boulder and then gasped as Neon dropped the laser pistol, opening fire instead with two huge chain guns.

They reduced the boulder to rubble in a matter of seconds and Meryl dived out of the way as larger chunks slid across the deck toward her. She pushed herself up onto hands and knees and turned in time to see sparks fly from Neon's suit as bullets tore through the lighted stripes on the massive shoulders. He stumbled backwards, forced to stop firing so he could catch his balance again.

Fifteen yarz away, Vash appeared from behind the remains of the boulder and fell heavily against the metal plating of the steamer's deck. His revolver was thrown from his grasp as he tumbled to a halt on his side.

"No!" gasped Meryl. She leapt to her feet and ran, as best she could, picking her way through all the debris in bare feet. Neon was standing again and he had retrieved his discarded laser pistol, laughing as he advanced on Vash, who hadn't moved from where he had fallen.

Meryl gave up avoiding the rubble and just gritted her teeth against the sting of jagged rock shards biting into her heels as she sprinted the last few yarz to leap forward, putting herself between Vash and the pistol Neon had trained on him.

"No!"